Edited by William B. Bean, M.D.*
From time to time a thoughtful scientist is able to set down accumulated experiences seen and felt perceptively in such a way as to stimulate people in widely separate fields of science or in other fields of endeavor. Since medicine is the oldest field of biology, it stands to profit from a consideration of biology as seen from the viewpoint of a learned and perceptive biologist, Agnes Arber, whose field happens to be that of botanical morphology. The book is divided into two parts鈥攖he nature of biological research and the bases of biological thinking. In its broadest and most general terms, a biologist wants to know and above all to understand form, structure, and behavior of living things; the chemical and physical factors in their functioning; their development, reproduction, and genetics; their relation to the nonliving environment and to one another; and their history.